Vengeance Rider

Vengeance Rider (Iradi: Öch Alguuchu Chabandoz; Russian: Всадник мести) is a 1986 Soviet Eastern, the Iradi variety of the Western, directed by Malik Shakirov for Talasfilm Studios. A rider returns to find that a warlord's men have brutally killed his family, and the film follows him at a relentless pace as he hunts the warlord and his band across the steppe and the mountain passes.^[1] Almaz Sarybaev appears in a supporting role, Erkin Sultanbekov, the Kara-Bek of Desert Sun's Rebellion, plays the warlord, and the film was photographed by Vladimir Pak with music by Asan Jumabaev, the cinematographer and composer of Sadikov's film.

It is widely considered the last great Eastern, the high point of the cycle that began with Desert Sun’s Rebellion (1979) before the genre faded in the late 1980s (see Cinema of Irad). Shakirov made no further feature. He was killed in April–June 1992, during the Siege of Talas, when mortar fire struck his home.^[1]

References

1. ^ Central Asian Review of Screen Studies (2022). 'The Red Western Aesthetic of Nurlan Sadikov.' Vol. 16, Iss. 3, pp. 45–62.